


The River (Or "God Damn It: In Which Gods Are Damned")

by Orange



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-02
Updated: 2012-03-02
Packaged: 2017-11-01 00:04:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orange/pseuds/Orange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The game is made to adapt to the players, but once the game is broken, the players must adapt to the game. (Yeah I'm gonna change this summary to something better eventually. Unfinished story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was never finished. Fair warning.

In case it wasn't clear, magic is real.

Pardon my egress. You're on your own now.

When Rose dreamt, and she did not dream often, she dreamt of her own words; words she had written out in hopes of saving themselves, or at least saving some poor souls somewhere else down the line. It was the kind of thinking that Jade or Dave would've been apt to do, and she had felt pride well up in her chest at the time.

Now... now she dreamt of her words with disdain. She dreamt of her own initials, carved in impulsive rage on her laptop screen. She had been maniacally pleased when she scrolled down and the shimmering letters had rolled up the page, just like she thought they would.

It probably happened because she intended it to. 

Cracks in reality, whether carved into virtual space or found in the darkness amongst quasi-helpful lovecraftian horrors, don't fade away. They stay in one's head, behind eyelids and in front of one's face. 

Rose Lalonde could not fathom the hours she had given to the saccharine wasteland that was "her" planet, searching ceaselessly for any signs of life, any desecrated temple, any possible font of information she could utilize to put her plan into motion.

She did not have a plan, of course, but she was sure that it just needed some kind of motion. She was waging war with that quaint little phrase yet at the same time attempting to eke out what little hope she could from it. 'Into motion'. She laughed bitterly into the sharp winds.

Her plans weren't going anywhere.

\---  
\---

Fucking hell. Let's try this right the fuck again then.

Dave Strider whipped out his timetables for the fifth time in as many hours and rewound back about forty-five minutes. He thinks it's about that long; in reality it's exactly that long. He doesn't pay much attention to the numbers.

"Good thing I've gotten the hang of this 'previously on Nobody Listens to Strider' shit," he whispers to himself in an almost conspiratorial tone, languidly drawing the timevinyls back with a single finger. "Otherwise her voice would make me jump out of my elder god damn non-euclidean pants. Fuck's sake." 

And then, seamlessly, "Lalonde, there you are. Glad I found you. You have no gog damn idea how fuckin' hard it is to find someone who zooms around at warp nine with motherfuckin' mystical rocket needles."

Rose, who had stopped to investigate a dilapidated building, wasn't all that surprised. Some repressed part of her (the dreamself aspect, she suspected) knew that Dave was apt to just pop up whenever he thought he needed to. She had already decided that this was one of the times he needn't do so.

"Hello Strider," she spoke softly. Her voice sounded husky, quiet and yet-- close-up. Almost in your ear. Fucking frightening. "As the Knight of Time, I'm somewhat surprised to see you here. I was previously convinced that you had far too many things to amuse yourself with already. Surely you don't need my help."

"Nah, not really needing any help right now, unless you can help me to convince you that you need some help with this... whatever the shit it is you're doing. It's confusing as fuck. I mean, let's put the blowing-the-gate-right-the-fuck-up shit to the side. We'll wait until that shit dries up so we can pick up it all easy-like and throw that shit away."

"Your analogies," his floating friend said with a wry grin, "are among the loveliest examples of literary genius I've thus encountered."

"Yeah, and you've read Barkley's biography, so I guess that's sayin' somethin'. Fuckin' beautiful as fuck I bet. Can read that shit in the dark it's so damn brilliant." Dave grinned on the inside at his own humor, but only briefly; his thoughts settled down to match his cool exterior. "Shouldn't be making these silly damn diatribes right now. Can't hardly help it when she reacts the way she does, really," he thinks to himself. It's a fleeting thought.

"Anyway, look. You're trying to break the game. I can respect that. That's a gog damn fantastic master plan, by the way. Step one, break the game. Step two, break other shit. I don't know how it goes; I'm not really the mastermind here. My point is, I want to help you do whatever it is you're doing. Think about it. With my help, I could just pull us back whenever you break something really important, and then we'd know not to break it."

Dave thought he made a convincing case. 

Rose eyed him levelly, seeming as if she was mulling it over. Dave was having a really hard time telling how long it took her to reply, since everything happened so fast for him. Finally, she perked an eyebrow up and spoke.

"Yes. Theoretically."

Wrong again, Junior. Can't fuckin' phone a friend; haven't got a one that isn't pre-occupied with some highly plot-relevant, important grade-triple-fuckin'-A shit. Good thing you're not some kind of hostage negotiator, those hostages would be dead as soon as you picked up the damn loudspeaker.

"Dave, I don't want anyone else to get hurt in my attempts to break this miserable piece of software." She gave him a look that was meant to show her intentions. Her feelings. Her expression spilled over with apologeticness, sincerity, and above all determination in the face of both of the former emotions. To Dave, she looked like she wanted help after all. In the grand scheme of things, both her intent and his assumption were correct.

"I'm sorry, Strider. This is something I am going to pursue on my own. If something goes wrong, I don't want you or any of my friends in the ensuing blastwave. Whatever form the result may manifest as, I shall deal with it on my own. If I need your help after that... I'll call out. I doubt you'll be able to miss it."

Then there was a crack like a thunderclap in the air, leaving the strong scent of sulfur in the air (though laced somewhat with a smell Dave couldn't identify; sweet and flowery, but the hell he would ever apply the word to anything in seriousness), and just like that she had fled once more.

Fucking. Hell.

Once more, then. With feeling.


	2. Switchback

TT: If my past self can wake up sooner, maybe I'll be the one to visit you first this time.  
TT: I'll fly by and remind you you're already awake and don't know it.  
TG: yeah thatd be cool i guess  
TG: im gonna go now   
TT: Good luck.

That was the last she had heard from him. However shoddily executed, however hasty and reckless it may be, this was the plan. She had long since agreed to it, knowing it to be an inevitability, and couldn't say no.

She didn't have to be happy about it. In fact, her once inchoate anger at the prospect had only escalated as time went on, and ultimately it had exhausted itself, only to metamorphose into a hard lump in her throat. Rose was no longer angry, and no longer afraid, she realized. She was ready to go to sleep, yes, but oh so ready to wake up. 

She knew that she would awaken, of course. Maybe not here, no, but in all likelihood in an altogether better place than this one.

And so, she laid herself down in her cozy pile of overwrought knitting attempts, curled into herself as tight as she could, and did her best to fall into that precious state of slumber. 

~~~

It wasn't long at all before she woke up. It felt as though she had only been asleep minutes; maybe even less than that. She felt very light, truth be told. Inside, she wondered briefly if upon opening her eyes she would be gazing upon her perception of the afterlife-- and, very suddenly, she willed herself from a manic state as she thought loudly to herself, "I do believe in an afterlife."

Then, in infinitesimal, almost imperceptible increments, Rose opened her eyes.

Her heart did not feel as though it stopped. Rather, it felt as though it had started beating so hard that it had leapt from her chest and gone on without her, off to pursue other adventures elsewhere. The lump in her throat felt like it was expanding to choke her into unconsciousness once again; a feeling which she nigh-succumbed to.

She had gone nowhere at all.

===  
===

Alright, maybe, just maybe he was not familiar enough with the fantastically delicious bowl chock full of crunchy clusterfucks that was Sburb. So it was a testament to his incredibly massive patience, his colossal amount of cool, that he wasn't flipping out right now. (Seriously; if monkeys witnessed his patience they'd be worshiping it like a god damn monolith like in that stupid Kubrick movie.)

The Real Dave-- or, less arguably, the Dave that wasn't him, had just entered his first gate in a silly ass plush suit. Davesprite probably would've done the same thing in his position, just in a less less unironic and chump-like fashion. And he knew, as was part of the (haha, oh man, sarcasm) rules, he couldn't follow this Dave through the first gate. He'd have to wait until this penultimate-ironic-player reached the god damn third gate to commence to those fuckin' happy fun times.

So what he should be doing, right now, is drawing up some deliriously ironic webcomics. Just because it's the apocalypse, are people goin' to stop reading his magnificent work of avant-garde fuckin' genius? Shit naw. So why should he stop making them at a time like this, when people need hope in a most ironic form?

Because of a motherfuckin' glitch. At least he's calling it a glitch, so obviously that's what it's gotta be. Moronic terminology better respect and understand. Why the hell else would he be on Rose's damn planet CAW? God damn it.

"Hold the motherfuckin' phone," he squawks, the ground beneath him lurching suddenly downward. "Why the hell-ass is this island sinking?" Flying up to get a better look, even the world's coolest (and only) half-bird dude can't help but squawk in utter surprise. 

Turtles. Gigantic fucking turtles. Everywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep! This one is worked into the Vol 5 Fanstraviganza too! I did most of my writing around that time.


	3. Amphibious Subterrain & Clockwork Contrivance

Rose was sincerely and visibly surprised. Saying that however would be putting it somewhat lightly. It was more appropriate to say that she was highly disconcerted. Were she a replication of herself making observations, she would have to say she was also concerned for her sanity. And analogies like those didn't help.

She recalled something, then. In the darkness of her room, a memory seemingly primal and yet so recent indeed, disturbed the waters of her mind with hints of a vague, dangerous undercurrent.

JASPERSPRITE: All the life in the ocean and all the shiny rain and the songs in your head and the letters they make.  
JASPERSPRITE: A beam of light i think is like a drop of rain or a long piece of yarn that dances around when you play with it and make it look enticing!  
JASPERSPRITE: And the way that it shakes is the same as what makes notes in a song!  
JASPERSPRITE: And a song i think can be written down as letters.  
JASPERSPRITE: So if you play the right song and it makes all the right letters then those letters could be all the letters that make life possible.  
JASPERSPRITE: So all you have to do is wake up and learn to play the rain!

She almost grasped something, something extremely intricate and relevant to the unknowable manic waltz of the game's underlying plot. It was almost in her reach, the tip of her tongue, the edge of her mind, just outside her periphrey--

Her room was almost pitch black. That's definitely what was different. Any other time she would've berated herself, and fun would be had by all. Or maybe just Dave. But right now she was more horrified. What sigh could possibly be waiting for her out her bedroom window? Had all the stars in the universe suddenly faltered in some cataclysmic cosmic wind, flickering one last time before fading out completely while she slept? Was her room some kind of... relativity-bending paradox, the last remnant of all that ever was, leaving her alone in a universe of her own, surrounded by darkness?

As she wondered, she made her way as slow as could be toward the window in question. If she actually thought about going to look, after all, she would never from that spot. So instead she kept thinking of all the things she might glimpse out in the abyss, if an abyss was what it was. 

Rose rested her hands against the reinforced glass, searching with eyes full of hope that were on the brink of-- what, exactly? Another emotion. Some kind of embryonic state of mad resignation, some sociopathy with herself that threatened to detach and become something of it's own kind were she to accept this as the end. 

Something so filled with hate it would scale the space between nothing and something.

And just as quickly as the feeling raged in, it dissipated into nothing, as did every other thought in her head, leaving only sheer awe at what she was seeing, what she was staring at. Briefly, a very small part of her noted that she may have already gone off the deep end, considering:

Crossing the face of the window were bio-luminescent creatures; strange, ethereal looking beasts of, at times immense size and yet at others immeasurably small. It was quite literally breathtaking, and in those blissfully childlike moments Rose Lalonde felt nothing but wonder as she gazed upon their lazy strides, their graceful to-and-fro, and their boundless curiosity at this window into some new, strange world that contained only a little girl.

It would appear, then, that she was underwater. 

"Correct, young Seer."

Of all the creatures in what was, she now realized, a sea so massive that she must surely be at the bottom of it-- of all the creatures to dwell in these abyssal depths, the voice that spoke out to her came from one that did not seem to glow at all. Her eyes struggled to focus on the shape behind so many gigantic and minuscule creatures, and all at once her mind cried out for a rational world, one where she could look in at least one direction and have things make sense. 

There beyond the shimmering, glowing beasts, behind krill, fish and other things indescribable, was a giant turtle, swimming toward her. Rose felt as if she was going to hyper-ventilate any moment now, but her body shivered violently at the prospect of going back to sleep any time soon.

"Y-you're one of my Consorts, aren't you?"  
"Correct, young Seer."

Rose had barely even exhaled the words, speaking more to herself than anything, but the thing had read her mind, after all. Her speech, however soft-spoken or gently breathed, would no doubt be heard. No sooner had she realized this than she thought she heard the faint echo or perhaps a thought shared across minds in reply: "Correct, young Seer."

"I can scarcely see you, my humble Consort," she spoke, regaining her confidence at a pace akin to molasses. "...amongst all of these luminescent creatures. I would prefer that I could set eyes upon you, and speak with you in earnest. Is there any way that we can abscond to the surface?"  
"Yes, young Seer."

Her room lurched so suddenly she fell to her feet, and her nerves set on edge without warning; her mind frantic at having lost sight of the world outside her window. She was terrified now, to gaze out of her porthole once more. The world might not be where she left it. It was a silly thought, and in her chest she felt horribly giddy, a lunacy-laced laughed escaping her lips.

Rose scrambled for the window, and looked out. Nothing seemed to have change, save for the positions of a few of the fish illuminating the darkness. The Turtle seemed to be staring at her from the side, as it had before; fins bobbing lazily as if rowing across a lake. She felt a sensation as if she was sinking further down somehow, and hastily shot a look out the window, gazing down into the dark below. 

And there in the depths, she saw the black-on-black silhouette of an enormous turtle fin, carrying her up from the sea floor.

===  
===

Dave was pretty god damn sure that Rose's planet didn't have any life on it. That was it's whole quirk. Her Denizen was supposed to have eaten all the fish in the whole damn sea, just shoving his face full like some kind of sushi genocide. 

And no, even when they finally got the whole visu-link thing up and running and they could see each other's planets, all whoopin' and cheerin' like the fuckin' Mars Rover wasn't offline after all and was about to do some kind of heartwarming as shit sequel to Wall-E-- even then, he didn't really question it. There were things that were a hell of a lot more important to think about other than these floating, rainbow-spewing turtle shells at the moment.

So the lack of any large islands bugged him a bit. Probably more than he let on. That was a pretty normal occurrence. The amount of life he could see on the world however bugged him exactly as much as he let on: a metric fuckton. The waters were very clear; seemingly dirty from far away but up close it was obvious that there was just so many fucking things living in the water. He expected that this was what the world might look like if...

If there were no such things as the Denizens.

"Holy shit," he thought. "What if..." It was a senseless question, because there would always been those kind of things on these planets. That was how they worked. They were game planets. Levels, basically. You got in, bounced off a mechanical bug here and there, grabbed some rings or coins or some shit, bitch-slapped a fat guy in a hovercraft and got the hell out of there. Without the game mechanics, the worlds were basically just planets teeming with life and lacking any sort of predators, as far as he could tell. 

The boysprite flew over the planet with idle interest, wondering what brought him back here. Something told him that this might be part of the game, that it was all very integral and maybe important, but then he didn't really know much about what he was supposed to be doing. For sure he was supposed to be dishin' out some wicked informative shit. Wouldn't even need a high school diploma with his kind of intel; just walk into a building and be all, "Nah, we're all gravy, this cool guy Dave told me what's goin' on" and next thing you know you're running the god damn business. 

But Dave-- the real Dave-- hadn't asked him anything. He wasn't entirely sure the dude could even pester him where he was. He figured it should be possible, by all rights. His sprite-brain told him it was. But he wasn't going to stress on that shit right now. That shit can go ahead and sit in the waiting room. He's got some other patients to deal with.

And before he could think about what he should do as a kernelsprite on a Denizen-less planet, he saw something of in the distance that caught his avian eyes.

A familiar looking building, raising from up out of the ocean.


End file.
